Thursday, October 9, 2008

Delayed Gratification

I had been holding off on harvesting my Beauregard sweet potatoes because I'd read somewhere that you should wait for the foliage to start turning brown before they are ready. Then yesterday I was poking around on gardenweb.com and I read that you are supposed to get sweet potatoes out of the ground before the first frost. Now, it has "only" been getting down to the 40's at night lately, but I don't want to be caught off guard. I am really busy right now so I need to use the time when I have it. Besides, it is October now and I planted these things on Mother's Day weekend in May. That should be plenty of time, right?

Well, as you can see, I have a very respectable crop. This was my first time to grow sweet potatoes and I didn't know how to plant them. I didn't realize you were supposed to take the plant from the nursery and separate it into slips before planting them all. I just planted the whole thing as one big clump. As a result, many of my potatoes are on the smallish side. But I'm not complaining. And next year I'll know how to plant them. I think I have several fairly large ones despite them being crowded!

This was definitely one of my more successful crops and I will grow them again without a doubt.

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About Me

"I garden, therefore I am."
I have an organic vegetable and berry garden in my backyard in the suburbs of Indianapolis, Indiana. I also dabble in flowers of all kinds, but my heart lies with the veggies.